Patch against 20130317 pull of the github version. Java is disabled by default --with-java will invoke autodetection of jdk.
2013-03-17 03:33:22 PDT in The Sleuth Kit
If you solely want to detect the presence of libewf on the system, then yes checking for libewf_get_version() works for both the v1 and v2 API.
2013-01-28 06:21:49 PST in The Sleuth Kit